Photo: Wylly Suhendra | Unsplash
One of the leaders for a coalition of five Native American tribes in Utah says its new agreement with the US government could set a precedent for future deals between the Indigenous peoples and the US. The new deal, recently signed, will allow five tribes and the federal government to jointly manage Bears Ears National Monument, which covers more than 550,000 hectares of land. The five nations are the Hopi, Navajo Nation, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and the Ute Indian Tribe of the Unitah and Ouray Reservation. "I feel like it’s a little surreal still … For our tribes, part of it is almost being welcomed home, right? The US government has a history of removing people in order to declare these so-called public lands. And so some of it is a reconciliation of, you know, kind of taking a step forward and our tribes being able to come home to their ancestral homeland -- and then not only that, but to be recognized as equal decision-makers in the management of those lands," said Charissa Wahwasuck-Jessepe, co-executive director of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition.
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